Fifty-Six
by She-Who-Cannot-Be-Chained
Summary: Harry Potter finds out there is much more to Godric Gryffindor than bravery, honour and disgustingly good looks.


Disclaimer: I will never, ever, ever…own Harry Potter.

**FIFTY-SIX**

Harry Potter was running, but for once, it wasn't for his life.

"Dammit, dammit, _dammit,_" he swore, running as fast as he could up the stairs. He didn't even think as one of the staircases began to move, leaping from the top step to the landing of another one. The portraits were yelling obscenities at him ("I hope you fall offa one of 'em stairs and crack your skull in, boy!") but he paid them no attention. This couldn't be happening, not now. Not at the end of the _year_. They were _so close_ to winning the House Cup, and there was no way he'd let Gryffindor lose to Slytherin.

He had lost his Potions textbook, and he had half an hour to find it before his next Potions class. If he didn't…well, put simply, he'd be dead meat. _The great Bat of the Dungeons_ _would just_ love _an excuse to take away a hundred points_, he thought viciously. His entire House would kill him, and his win in the last Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match of the year would have been for naught.

He wasn't Harry Potter for nothing, however, and he'd be damned if he let Severus bloody Snape hang this one over his head.

As he landed on the seventh floor and turned left, he spied what he was looking for – a tapestry which showed some guy called Barnaby Something or Other's appalling attempt at trying to teach trolls ballet. He had never taken notice of it before, except to note its ugliness, but Dobby had said that the entrance of the 'Come and Go Room' was hidden right across from it. Harry had been planning to use it as Headquarters for the secret Defence group he was thinking of starting, but in the meantime, he needed his book.

Skidding to a stop in front of it, he took a second to catch his breath and go over Dobby's instructions. "Harry Potter must be walking past the wall three times," he remembered Dobby saying excitedly. "And be thinking very hard about what Harry Potter wants!"

_Walk past it three times and think about what I want_, he repeated in his mind. _Easy enough._

He didn't know _which_ part of the wall to walk in front of, though, so he decided to just walk past it all.

_I need to find my Potions book. I need to find my Potions book. I need to find my Potions book._

When he finished, he stared expectantly at the wall, and much to his surprise and delight, a door materialised. It was sturdy and elegant, with a brass doorknob and the words 'Room of Requirement' engraved on it in long, swirling letters. If he had to rate his joy on a scale of one to ten, he'd probably say ten thousand.

"Dobby, I could kiss you right now!" he shouted gleefully, before clamping his mouth shut. He never knew where the disturbingly devoted (but well-intentioned) House Elf was, and it would be just like him to take Harry at his word. The image made him queasy.

Stepping into the room, Harry looked around, and in a second, his hopes quickly plummeted from ten thousand to negative fifty.

There were literally _thousands_ of books in here. They were stacked on top of each other like some crude library city or something, with piles that looked taller than the front doors of the school. Most of them looked ancient. It wasn't even just books in there, either; there were Fanged Frisbees, lying half dead on the ground, and broken furniture as far as he could see.

How in Merlin's smelly socks was he meant to find his Potions book in here?

"What would Hermione do?" Harry muttered to himself. "Think, Potter." Thinking of Hermione, though, didn't help exactly, because he was pretty sure that if Hermione was shown this room, she would flip out and then go swimming in the lovely objects that are Old and Probably Restricted books. Taking out his wand, he thought for a moment, before saying, "_Accio_ Harry's Potions book!"

Nothing happened.

"_Accio_ Potions book!"

Still nothing.

"Bugger."

It looked like he'd have to go through the stacks himself, one painful tower at a time.

. : : : : : : : : : .

It was well past the start of his Potions class when Harry saw the cabinet. He had already given up on finding his book before the start of class, since missing the period was better than going there without a book. At least this way, he'd be able to go to Madame Pomfrey and say he had a headache, and just get her to push the time on his note a little farther back. Snape wouldn't be able to take points if he had a note. Hermione would frown upon his methods, but the Nurse loved him; he never left a dull moment in her life.

The cabinet was a eerie old thing, and he had never seen something as interesting in his life. It was taller than Hagrid, with a pointed top and a square bottom. The wood looked like it was rotting, with the paint chipping off, and it was a dull kind of grey. It seemed to be emitting a certain type of aura: one of power and danger and thrills, all mixed into one.

He was already in front of it and reaching for the handle before he noticed, and then he pulled his hand back sharply.

Harry studied it. He was drawn to it, obviously. Why? It didn't seem or feel like Voldemort's work, which meant theoretically it should be okay to open, right?

Unless it was some perilous torture device left by a student from the 1700s, luring him to get his head sliced off.

_Don't be paranoid, Harry,_ he thought. He couldn't let Voldemort get to him. It was just a cabinet. What harm could a cabinet do?

_A lot,_ he found out as he pulled open the door and promptly got sucked into darkness.

Why was it always him?

. : : : : : : : : : .

Merlin, he felt terrible. He couldn't see a thing, his head was pounding, and for some inexplicable reason, his arse hurt.

He had that strange feeling that a person got when someone was watching them while they slept, and, realising that the reason he couldn't see a thing was because his eyes were closed, he opened them. He barely held in a scream when he found a face so close to his that he saw the pupils of their eyes, and he was so startled that he sat up quickly, painfully knocking his head against that of the creepy stranger.

"OW!" Where were his glasses? Everything was blurry, but he saw a tall figure with red hair backing away from him, cradling his own head. "What the bloody hell, Ron?"

As his hands groped the ground for his glasses, 'Ron' said something crossly in a language that didn't sound like English. His voice was deep, manly and very foreign-sounding.

Harry froze. That most definitely did _not_ sound like Ron.

His fingertips touched cold metal, and he hurriedly slammed the glasses back on his face. When he regained his eyesight, he blanched.

Yup. Most definitely _not_ Ron.

The boy looked older than him, and now that he could see better, he realised that his hair was not the carrot-red mop that characterised the Weasleys, but a deep brown-red, cut short and close to his head. His eyes were dark, and Harry could testify that he had never seen someone look at him with so much horror in his life. The guy even took the cake off of Aunt Petunia.

"Uh…who are you? And where am I?"

By chance, he looked around, and took in with a small amount of panic (which was growing steadily the more he stared) the tiny, square room he was in. The walls, ceiling and floor were completely white, there were no windows and the room was empty. The most important thing, however, was that there _were no doors._

Lesson learnt: never trust weird-looking furniture.

Harry forced himself to calm down, and looked up at the other boy, who was now staring him down. Figuring signing was the way to go when there were language barriers, he began to mime. "Do you…know…how…to get…_out_?"

The boy said something in his language, but since he wasn't signing, Harry had no idea what he meant. Harry tried to gesture for him to starting signing as well, which seemed to have gotten through to him because he raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. He began to mutter under his breath, and judging by the fact that his tone was one Harry had often heard Draco Malfoy use when insulting him, he decided it probably wasn't complimentary.

_I wish we could understand each other,_ Harry thought with a frown.

"-look like an unintelligent dingbat, with your arms flying about like you're having some kind of attack. Or even better, you look like a fish flopping about on land with no hope of finding water-"

"I do _not_ look like a fish flopping about on land," Harry said angrily. "I was trying to sign so that I could communicate you, since we obviously don't speak the same language!"

Then he stopped.

They stared at each other.

"Did you just speak my language?" the boy asked.

"Yes," Harry replied without thinking. And then they stared at each other again.

"How did you do that?" the boy asked. "One minute ago, you were babbling nonsense like a witch possessed, and now-"

"I have no idea," Harry said.

They were silent.

"Wait…" A lightbulb was going off in Harry's head. "I remember thinking in my head that I wished I could understand what you were saying, and then…it happened." He scratched his head. "Let me try something."

He closed his eyes and thought, _I wish there was a window here. _There was a surprised sound from the boy, and when Harry re-opened his eyes, there was a big window opposite him, where there had once been blank wall. It showed a picturesque snowy day, with green trees crusted with white powder and a frozen lake, even though Harry didn't feel cold in the slightest. He stared. "I think the room responds to wishes!" _Like the Room of Requirement_.

It dawned on Harry suddenly that this boy might be a Muggle, and that if he _was_ a Muggle, a wish-responding room would probably be considered beyond the realms of crazy. He needn't have worried.

Immediately after hearing Harry's words, the other boy closed his eyes, looking like he was concentrating very hard. He seemed to be murmuring something, wishing for something, and Harry looked around expectantly. Nothing moved.

"Was something supposed to happen?" he asked. The boy sent him a look that showed he clearly thought Harry was a little slow on the go.

"I wished for a way to get out of here, or a door of some sort," he said, sounding disappointed. "I have errands to attend to." He looked around, and shook his head. "I think we're stuck here."

_This is certainly more interesting than Potions,_ Harry thought. Shaking his head, he said, "Well, I suppose we'll have to make ourselves at home, then." They'd get out eventually; he always did. Someone would come looking for him, and even if they never found him, with time he'd find a way to get around the room's rules. He wished for the room to be bigger, and was surprised when the room was suddenly five times its original size.

The boy looked resigned to his fate, and unenthusiastically began wishing for a bed and a fireplace.

They finished what seemed like hours later (Harry belatedly wished for a clock), and ended up with what was pretty much a small house. The boy had discovered that they could, in fact, wish for doors if they led to different rooms and not to the outside world, and their house now consisted of a room for Harry, a room for the boy, a kitchen and a common room, which the boy had stuck the fireplace in.

They met there after they were done, and silence was palpable. Harry had no idea what to say to him.

"I'm sorry I called you a fish," the boy said awkwardly, making the first move.

Harry shrugged and gave a small grin. "I've been called worse. By the way, if we're going to be stuck here together until we can get out, you ought to know my name. I'm Harry Potter." He stuck a hand out, and the boy shook it.

"I'm Godric. Godric Gryffindor."

**A/N:**

**Originally intended to be a one-shot but then I fell in love with the pairing. Feeeeeels. The timeline is a bit messed up at the beginning, since it made it easier to write, but it isn't relevant to the story so I hope it doesn't bother anyone in a major way.**

**Read and review, and you get my firstborn child.**


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